Hi All, glad to have finally taken the plunge and joined the LCMC, I’ve been doing leathercraft in a more intense capacity since 2019ish, but have done the odd project with leather since I was 3-4 years old anod was introduced to the material by my parents (we were traveling around Australia in a horse drawn wagon, and my father needed to be able to repair the tack as needed)
Professionally I’m a watchmaker by trade, and work for one of the major Swiss brands in their service centre 4 days a week, and spend Fridays and large portions of the weekend wither doing leatherwork or making bow strings at a high level.
Pre-COVID times, I was doing watchmaking from my home workshop full time, and had started to look at making watch straps and wallets at a decent level.. due to COVID I had to put those plans on the back burner and spent most of 2020 working at the other end of the cow, spending 6 months working at a butchery, and 3 months working at one of the large tanneries, primarily processing bovine and kangaroo leather and developed more of an interest in the industry as a whole!
In 2021 I returned to the service centre part time, though didn‘t have much time to put into leatherwork, only doing a couple of small projects, roll around 2022 and one of my fellow watchmakers asked me to make a strap for him, to be sewn on to a watch that doesn’t take springbars.. and it hasn’t really stopped from there, but my desire to make better products has increased - which is why I’m here! I started by watching a number of Philip‘s Q&A videos on youtube, I had also seen Philip tagged in posts by Martin Carswell, and had enough disposable funds to cover the course!
I thought I’d finish by showing a couple of my projects from the last couple of months, each one learning a few more things…
"oh, i dabble a bit in leather work" and then he pulls out a bag with lining, piping, Edge binding and turned edges everywhere...
Nice to have you here :)
I had noticed a few nice watches in the q&a videos :-)
i currently work for Rolex, part time by choice, I previously (2008-2017) was there full time including multiple training trips to Geneva, so not a bad place to work!
i did have a brief watchmaking blog that still has some interesting bits and pieces, at Ashtonwatch.com and post my leatherwork and odd archery bits and pieces on instagram @atelierashton
looking forward to many projects ahead!
Tom
Wow, thank you for that intro! What an interesting story, I thoroughly enjoyed reading that.
Can you say what watch company you work for? I'm big into watches :D
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